This photo was posted on the Crackwatch page of BL3, claimed to be taken from a denuvo hacking server.
It could be wrong, but considering what epic has done until this point for money.. I would think twice.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1846/184606.htm
75.Much of the evidence that we received from gamers critiqued the loot box mechanics in Electronic Arts’s FIFA series. In the game’s ‘Ultimate Team’ mode, players build their own football team by buying virtual ‘packs’ containing a randomised selection of footballers. To purchase these packs, players use ‘coins’ that are earned in the game and ‘points’ purchased for real-world money. In 2016, EA’s CFO Blake Jorgensen told investors that the Ultimate Team mode accounted for roughly half of the $1.3 billion the company makes from extra digital content—that is equivalent to $650 million in annual revenue, in addition to that generated by units sales of the full games.143

76.Electronic Arts releases a new game in the FIFA series every year. However, with each new release, players’ teams are not transferred over and therefore they must rebuild their teams by purchasing more packs to acquire the best players. One gamer told us that this cycle resulted in them spending “almost £800 to £1000 a year annually on FIFA”.144 Another gamer told us that because a pack’s contents “directly affects gameplay because some players are not as good as others”, it incentivises people to keep buying packs in the hope of getting better players and, therefore, performing better in the game. They told us that:

in order to compete, players feel like they need to buy hundreds, if not thousands, of £s worth of packs in order to get the best players. Children are especially vulnerable because they lack the maturity to understand that these purchases are manipulative, and their parents may not understand that these purchases are entirely unnecessary.145

77.Moreover, because the probability of securing some footballers in a pack is less than 1%, some gamers have expressed frustration at spending vast amounts without receiving the desired reward.146 To tackle the issue of speculative spending on loot boxes, one player recommended that:

the sale of items in game, cosmetic or otherwise, should only be allowed via direct purchase or via achievements unlocked through in game actions. In a loot box type system the player, typically, has a very small chance of unlocking the item they actually want. This encourages further spending on loot boxes in order to get the item they want.147

78.We put some of these concerns to Kerry Hopkins from Electronic Arts, who responded that the way they have implemented this mechanic in FIFA “is quite ethical and quite fun”.148 Yet this is noticeably out of step with the attitude of many of the gamers who contacted us following our evidence session, including those who vehemently rejected her characterisation of packs not as loot boxes but as “surprise mechanics”.149 One gamer called the company’s testimony to us “a bare face lie”, and another told us that the company has:

heavily marketed and referred to their systems as ‘loot boxes’ for several years and […] the mechanics of the system are exactly the same no matter what they choose to call it.150

79.We recommend that loot boxes that contain the element of chance should not be sold to children playing games, and instead in-game credits should be earned through rewards won through playing the games. In the absence of research which proves that no harm is being done by exposing children to gambling through the purchasing of loot boxes then we believe the precautionary principle should apply and they are not permitted in games played by children until the evidence proves otherwise.

LegacyKillaHD | The UK Government finally has ruled against greedy gaming publishers like EA, Bethesda & Activision in a massive new report! 13. sep. 2019

Call for gaming loot box ban:

Gamers are creating huge bills in popular games like FIFA and Fortnite without knowing.
MPs say loot boxes should be recognised as a form of gambling and banned from being sold to children.
Loot boxes contain mystery in-game items, tempting players with the chance any of them could contain something of huge value.
An EA spokesperson told Sky News:
“We have an ongoing commitment to player safety and well-being whenever they are playing our games or engaging in our communities.
"We will continue to look at how we can contribute to productive research and solutions for the topics raised in this report, and we look forward to continuing our ongoing dialogue with the U.K. government.”

The British government should regulate loot boxes under gambling law, a parliamentary inquiry has recommended.

After nearly nine months of evidence gathering, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee today published its 84-page report into immersive and addictive technologies.

Chief among its list of recommendations were that paid loot boxes should be regulated under gambling law, and there be a ban on selling them to children.

The inquiry took evidence from all corners of the industry -- including developers, trade bodies, and academics -- and reported a "lack of honesty and transparency" among social media and game company representatives.

Take-Two | Borderlands 3 bait and switch marketing?
This is big if true.
Also, it appears that Take-Two used defamation/lies to shut down SupMatto's YouTube channel (Borderlands 3 Leak Scapegoat).
Defamation like this is illegal in many western countries.
Allegedly gamers close to SupMatto claim that Take-Two are planning bait and switch marketing. This follows a growing trend where games such as Fallout 76 and CoD: Black Ops release without MTX/loot box to avoid negative PR/reviews.
Then post-launch after the review cycle they add new predatory MTX/loot boxes.

Thx to Upper Echelon Gamers for doing some investigative journalism into this BL3 mess.

7:55 - Some new info confirm SupMatto did nothing wrong.

Quotes from Upper Echelon Gamers comments:

Sum FãggOtt
Take two is run by idiots. Why would they attack a guy who’s practically giving their game free advertisement?

Sealedinterface
Because they're afraid that the information leaking early will cost them pre-orders once it gets revealed in full. They think the only hype people will have will come from their own official sources, and hype coming from unofficial leaks is costing them money.
Why SupMatto?
They wanted to make an example to drive fear into all BL3 youtubers, and SupMatto was just big enough to make people notice, and just small enough to get crushed without legal resistance.

Enclavefakesoldier
I remember seeing someone comment in one of UEGs videos a few weeks ago who claimed he came from matto's discord. The reason take two axed him is because BL3 will have post launch DLC after the review cycle. Basically pulling what activision did with CTR

OblivionSA
@Enclavefakesoldier I remember seeing this as well. I want to say it was in the comments for YongYea or maybe TheQuartering. They had indicated it was because some of the info he had may have been about their plans to add loot boxes and other monetization to the game right after all the reviews were released. They didn't want that getting out so people would still buy their game thinking it was micro-transaction free as I believe they had promised. Then they can use the games as a service excuse to force an update with all the monetization crammed in without getting any of the bad PR and lost sales from reviews mentioning it up front.

Kelvin
And it was good advertising lol. One game I play did the opposite, they give leaks to the more proeminent youtubers from the community, the lead developer often joins in video streams with them to discuss about the development, and they even hired a programmer that created one of the most used third-party tools for this game.

crazyinsane
Many people covered it. However, they all said the same thing and didn't follow up on it. In fact, Yong is a terrible offender in this regard as he, unironically and unquestioningly, used IGN and Kotaku as a primary source. Nobody bothered trying to reach out to Submatto, his fans, or anyone else involved besides 2k up until now. I'm pretty sure, nobody else has addressed much of the misinformation campaign by 2k as spread by IGN and Inside Gaming. UEG is doing something very unusual by actually looking into the situation more in-depth than any of his contemporaries, who likely won't issue a follow-up to correct widespread misinformation.

Cornelius Dobeneck
In Germany it is a serious crime to openly claim someone committed a crime when he/she did not. In Supmattos case this claim cost him his "job" and he should sue the outlets who said so pointing out that their lies destroyed his live and endangered the well being of his family. Should be interesting. In addition to that this whole thing need to be published more and T2 boycotted. They need us, we do not need them.

Derek Capron
When the dust settles, I genuinely I wish that Supmatto would find the means to file a lawsuit against them as a corp and hell on an individual stand point. This falls under defamation of character and I am sure there is an attorney out there that would find several other avenues to attack at. The reality though is the cost of that would be extensive and the legal battle very arduous. It is a damn shame where this industry has gone, from the once loved and revered aspect that it was to what adulterated abomination it is now.

Today we have yet another absurd story from Fallout 76. While there have been glimmers of hope for the game, with content updates adding new content, that has not applied to microtransactions, where the game is steadily getting worse. Bare in mind that Bethesda initially said that the game would only contain cosmetic microtransactions only. Well, times sure have changed, and it’s no wonder why people find it so darn hard to trust the once loved developer.

*SNIP*
But that’s not all, Bethesda used the “none predatory Atomic Shop” narrative as an actual marketing tool during E3 2018 and PAX Aus 2018. Publication site vgr.com even cited GameSpot‘s interview with Hines on the “none pay-to-win” system:

“All the content we ever put out for Fallout 76, all the DLC, all the post-launch stuff, is going to be free. That’s important. And to say, the Atomic Shop is cosmetic stuff. To make sure folks understand. Look, there’s a line. There are people who have crossed it, but we’re going to stay on the right side of it in terms of the things you can spend money on and how this stuff works and what you’re getting for your $60. That you know, when they put out new content or features or whatever, I’m getting that stuff for free. That feels right.”

Looking back further than October 2018, back in August 2018, Hines and crew were using the “cosmetic only” narrative as a selling point on social media too:

Fast forward to today, and we now see a refrigerator that can keep food from spoiling by 50% is now in the Atomic Shop as per the latest update:

The disgusting part about this is how Bethesda used a marketing tactic of “sincerity” or “transparency” to ride the “good train” during a time when the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 debacle was simmering down and when Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey microtransaction controversies were picking up.

And as of now, Bethesda hasn’t even addressed said cosmetic marketing lie, which in turn has kicked up apologist defending the company’s egregious actions.

Lastly, the latest update for Fallout 76 brings a list of things, but one of them is a stat altering refrigerator that runs for $7 in the Atomic Shop — which is supposedly a cosmetic place only.

Everspace 2 devs talk about Epic's and Valve's storefronts: "Without Epic, Rockfish and Everspace wouldn't exist, but it's the same with Steam"; "Valve has the best platform, by far, to roll out a game as an independent developer"
*SNIP*
"Plus, our hardcore fans are on Steam," Schade adds. "They have already said 'Please don't do it. We just don't want it.' You don't even have to discuss whether this is reasonable or not. If they don't want it, they don't want it, and more than 100,000 people bought Everspace in Early Access. They would be mad at us.

Thanks for the info cobra. Always fun to see how the modern video game industry self destructs.

EGS anti-consumer practices is another slap in the face to the PC gaming community.
This will only provoke new hostility towards game publishers/devs. Not sure what they are thinking, pouring gas on fire/self destructs.

Supervillains to PC Gamers:

PC Gamers to Game Industry:

As for MTX/loot box gambling.
Unfortunately, there are enough people (whales) paying to keep the charade going.
EA Makes FIFA Boss Head Of Battlefield, Battlefront, & Need For Speed, 3. sep. 2019:

The game industry knows EA MTX/progression based loot boxes with random rewards is unpopular but they do it anyway because they have whales to keep them afloat.
For years, EA Fifa perfected a new monetization scheme to target whales.

This is called dynamic difficulty adjustment/scripting/momentum. EA have a patent for this.

With EA sport games such as Fifa19 (PEGI 3, not adult gaming), top whales are paying literally thousands of dollars each year for MTX/gambling. These are full-priced retail games, not even FTP.
Also note Fifa MTX is a closed ecosystem it's not like CS GO where you can sell skins and get money back.

https://pegi.info/what-do-the-labels-mean
At best Fifa is false advertisement as PEGI 3 games should not contain adult gambling or gambling simulator (PEGI 12, PEGI 16 or PEGI 18).
At worst, the game industry are abusing a legal vaccum and normalize gambling from a very young age.
The neuroscience is clear, gambling is highly addictive and triggers same brain area as alcohol and drug cravings symptoms. EA is like the Tobacco industry claiming it's not bad for your health

So far Belgium is the only western country that has been very proactive to deal with gambling addictions within the game industry. Perhaps not surprisingly EA was the only big publisher to challenge Belgium gambling laws (and lost).

As a gamer, I'm not against gambling for adult games such as CS GO (PEGI 18). But the game industry want non-regulated gambling with PEGI 3 games which is insane.

*SNIP*
They weren’t wrong. EA tried to hold the line on these decisions until Disney executives forced the company to pull the loot crate system just hours before launch. Now, the entire event — and EA’s worst-in-class loot box system — are recorded for posterity.
*SNIP*
EA hasn’t stopped trying to argue that its conduct in these events was blameless; the company took substantial heat earlier this year for describing its game mechanisms as ‘Quite ethical surprise mechanics.’ Thus far, neither the public nor legislators investigating whether loot boxes are equivalent to gambling have been willing to buy what the company is selling.

This post was offtopic, but to show that the game industry is not much better than the Tobacco/Casino business.

I'm trying to be polite, for $20,000 I can do that. But I won't stop bashing EA, never.

The moment I see them pull some shady EA marketing shit I'm off the hype train.
I don't trust Microsoft marketing but they are far less greedy than EA Vancouver.
Relic studio leadership still has EA loyalists that never will say anything bad about Fifa/Star Wars MTX.
The art/programmers/sound devs have little to do with this, they follow what they are told from higher ups. It's not fair to burn the entire studio because a handful of marketing guys/executive producer adopted EA MTX/shady marketing.

For those that don't know this CoH, CS:GO, CoD and Overwatch MTX etc. were adopted from Fifa MTX.

Relic/Sega marketing tried to target CoH2 whales just as EA did to Star Wars in 2017.
Without the Star Wars community backlash all the big publishers including Sega/Microsoft was planning to copy the Fifa business model.
I don't know who in Sega greenlighted this Fifa P2W shit but from Relic I know what you did!.

Primary Achievement:
Partnered with HQ publishing on business strategy and established the supporting business models for multiple titles. Influencing brand communications, development direction, business models and service support for Company Heroes 2

I’ve never talked about this before, but the irony of Don Mattrick as Xbox Chief was huge for me: when I first came to EA Canada to present the idea of a Microsoft console, he nearly blocked me from addressing the company because he didn’t believe it was possible. It was tense.

To Relic leadership:
Fifa + EA sport games will get regulated. Not if, when.
Move away from EA support while you still can or suffer the consequences.
The internet never forgets and we wont forget what EA did to Star Wars.

Every single year 2K be doing this shit, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so sad and repulsive. I don't want to catch another ban, that will be overturned because of how disgusting 2K actually is, so I'm just going to quote my old post from last year to describe how I really feel about it.

Didn't buy 2K18 won't be buying 2K19 and I fucking loooooooove basketball videogames. But VC completely killed it for me and 2K can go die in the fucking trashfire this franchise has become. It's funny because the way to get good at nba2K involves getting a real job and investing the funds you get from your real job into this virtual one. They literally value your hours played at cents if you convert your vc earnings back into dollars, you can pay 25$ to ball or you know grind for 250 fucking hours. This is not a game you can play casually, it either requires undying devotion or extra money that's the end of it.

The developers, ceo, and everyone involved in this shitfest of a franchise are the most tonedeaf assholes they can possible be too. They're disgusting, fetid, repulsive, and amoral leeches siphoning as much wealth as they can out of an increasingly limited playerbase. The only thing they patch with a swiftness are the VC glitches everything else will languish going unpatched for months or sometimes never. If people complain their moneygrubbing fuckery is becoming too pervasive they'll call you entitled. National governments are telling them to fucking stop and their response is to throw a shitfit on the internet and beg fans with stockholm syndrome to go lobby for them like they aren't astroturfing the shit out of this anyway.

They've got advertising on advertising and you have to pay to buy their advertising (with real money) because it gives you an advertising level of advantage on the court and it's insulting. 2k isn't a videogame it's a social experiment to see what it takes to grind souls into tiny nubs willing to drop dollars on virtual baller skills & outfits. I complained about this in 2014 http://thevgpress.com/forumtopics/next-gen-macrotransactions-the-biggest-threat-to-gaming_2616.html and it has only gotten exponentially worse since. I'm super annoyed (salty?) because I'd like to play some 2K basketball but I can't be buying videogames this morally reprehensible. So in summary eat a massive frozen turdcicle 2K.

I believe NBA2K’s microtransactions are predatory beyond what is now considered the norm in videogaming. Virtual currency has infected and grown its slimy tendrils into every part of nba2k like some sort of malignant virus or a cancerous tumor. You cannot engage with the game on any level without continually rebuffing attempts to get you to spend more money. It is psychological warfare, that preys on the weak, in basketball videogame form, and I honestly believe that the people that implement, maintain, optimize and otherwise strategize on methods for making this system of abuse “better” are people of questionable moral fiber.

I find it disingenuous to claim that these people are incapable of objectively evaluating how their systemized monetization of player desires is leading people into some bad places. I’m sure they have people with degrees in psychology or related fields that understand operant conditioning, variable ratio scheduling, and the other psychological phenomena they abuse to encourage spending far better than I do. These people are also capable of assessing the negative consequences of the systems they implement and any ignorance claimed on their part is undoubtedly feigned.

So if you’re armed with that knowledge and continue to implement and weaponize these predatory and abusive systems you’re not a good person. If you’re unable to muster any pushback from within your development structure to this systemized abuse you’re not a good developer. If you’re a publisher that requires this level of abuse to be implemented by your developers you’re not a good publisher. And if your CEO is out there on the internet calling your paying customers entitled that’s just a bad look. Everyone is complicit.

If your game has to launch with a head start pay to win special edition that isn’t actually special outside of the included virtual currency you’re already starting off questionably. If you continue on to lower the payouts and rewards after reviewers are done reviewing you’re entering sleazeball territory. But if you do all of the additional things 2k does beyond that it just becomes unquestionably repugnant on a multitude of levels.

2K will get you to invest real currency into an rpg style character-archetype system and then re-balance the game to the point where that character is no longer fun to play and you cannot respec or otherwise recoup VC. They sell perishable multiplayer enabled stat boosting items that require constant repurchasing. They will lower the payout on gameplay rewards and increase the cost of virtual items as the game gets further away from release. They include both in game and video based advertising and a lot of it is unskippable. They have a casino with a literal wheel of fortune but it’s not gambling… The list goes on…

And then the game actually includes real gambling with the ante up mode letting you wager on the outcome of games. Some kid could buy $99 worth of virtual currency and end up losing all of it over the course of a few games against some online basketball shark. Let that sink in for a second. They try to skirt rules and regulations and try to manipulate their fan base to ratify it, but ultimately it’s gambling. I mean, It’s an even worse and more predatory version of gambling because the house never has to pay out and incurs 0 risk.

And then they’ll still sell loot boxes, permanent & temporary stat increases, cosmetics, cards, and whatever else they can think of. But hey at least the hair is free now... smh…

As a game the entire thing is structured so you always feel like you’re missing something that you think you need to have fun. And that thing is always a massive grind or a cash transaction away. Nba2k is rarely fun though, at best it’s fun in a maybe this’ll actually be fun after 250 hours or $99 kind of way.

So when you add all of the above up it’s evident that large parts, if not the entirety of their corporate structure, from the uncaring disinterested community manager on up, have been completely corrupted in the chase of the almighty whale dollar. Furthermore If you look at some of the deceitful bad faith tactics 2K routinely engages in, like providing special edition review copies, pressuring reviewers to remove low scores, attempting to manipulate your fanbase into a lobbying force, and more it paints a picture of a pustulent, fetid, rotten, amoral, and greed driven corporate culture that only seeks to enrich itself. Smaug sitting on a mountain of gold...

I’m sorry if calling 2k out on their predatory nonsense is upsetting to some here but it needs to be done repeatedly and with increasing intensity. Corporations do not need to be afforded special protections and if they’re doing morally repugnant things I’m going to call that out using language appropriate for dealing with monolithic, morally bankrupt, vile, disgusting entities.

Worst part is I'm voting with my wallet like people say, I'm not buying these games, but it doesn't even matter because they keep getting worse and more manipulative ever year to cover lost sales revenue. I'd really like to play a basketball game but I literally can't give a company this disgusting my money.

I love how this trailer is only scratching the surface of 2K's entire microtransaction scheme and is already disgusting, it's just myteam which is honestly a disgusting mode but it's almost quaint compared to how manipulative some of their other modes, like MyPlayer, are. I've been complaining about this for so long and it's frustrating since there's 0% chance they'll change without government or regulatory intervention. At this point I'm sure they're selling way less copies than they used to but since they're selling a virtual casino for whales they're coming out ahead.

I mean this was in last year's game:
They got away with that with 0 repercussions and they will get away with this shit with 0 repercussions outside of one youtube video with a bad ratio and some pundit commentary from sterling, angry joe, yong yea and the like.